F-16: Why Ukraine would still face big hurdles in using the US-made fighter jets

cnn.com

1 point·rntn··4 comments

From what I have heard, the F16s require a 'clean' airfield where servicemen will daily walk the runways to find and remove small pieces of debris from the runways that would otherwise be sucked into the engine air intakes during take off and landing and cause damage to the engine.

From the article: “F-16s do best on long, pristine runways."

Ukraine does not have airfields like this any more. Quite often the planes would even be required to use sections of ordinary road highway as landing grounds.

In such a situation, those F16s would soon be too damaged to be useful.

Ukraine doesn't even send up its own existing fleet of MIGs

why isn't anyone asking them why they don't use the planes they have?

The MIG question is a curious one. Likely due to a very last line of defense battle plan but who knows?

I would also ask what avionics are being used in these F-16's? From what I know being in an F/A-18 unit many moons ago not all avionics are equal. Nobody with Hornets are getting the state of the art avionics but the US. I know the Hornet, even decades ago could be remotely controlled from what a pilot told me but I've said too much and will stop there.

Could easily be because they have concluded they need more planes than they currently have to stand a chance against the enemy.

The risk of losing fighters and pilots goes up the more lopsided the quantities of fighters are.

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